Life got busy - Part 2

Hi everyone, as the title says - Part 2... so go back and read part 1 if you've come here first.

The above picture accurately represents the pace of life right now so lets get back to the updates, kids are back at school - that's right, Ryan is a 3rd grader and Hannah is 2 years away from K.  Time flies when you're mentally busy!

Before I get onto work situations, let's first announce that we're back up to 3 cats once again!  If you haven't seen/heard we once again found a black cat.  In short, we'd agreed that we'd not get one before vacation - hardly fair - and would best be suited to waiting for a "clear the shelters" event. Well, I found out there was a nationwide one the day after vacation, so we went to Leesburg and found a lot of cats available for show & share effectively.  Ryan of course, being so close to Jet, found a 1 year old black female, and consequently got upset when we suggested we think about it.  So we checked and it was still unclaimed, and if we were open to a visit that day we'd be able to have her.  

Once that had all been sorted, we were advised to keep kitten away from the other 2 and introduce them all gently.  So Ryan asked for kitten to be in his room, no big deal, litter box, food, water, play up there and keep her company.  And it worked great for 24 hours... and then Ryan decided he didn't want his door shut.  Out came kitten, debatably named Oreo, which narrowly beat off Jet 2 (this is not another bloody fish scenario! - Bluey 2 is fine by the way!) and swiftly explored under the bed, running into a surprised Poof Cat who momentarily thought Jet had been resurrected.  

The net result of this, once Oreo decided she liked running up and downstairs - she's a kitten, who wouldn't? Is that Jakey found himself in danger of not being the biggest thug in the house, he's fighting back quite hard, but it's fair to say she's feisty.  And poor old Poof has quarantined himself downstairs, he actually clearly couldn't give a crap about the kitten, but he did manage to initially embargo himself in our room, but that came to an end in a never-ending sea of vomit on our bed, carefully synchronized in time with me washing the sheets in between the chuffing.  What a git!  Things are settling down after a month and I think in time all will be fine, or at least tolerable :)

Work, both Jessica & I are working very hard, we're entering into our major month and I've just picked up a new role, it's testing me quite a bit, because there's a lot of new protocols & procedures to learn.  With 4 staff moving on inside a month at my level it's become very much all hands to the pumps and personally I'm just hoping that come October any mistakes aren't too costly.  I can tell tensions are running high because some people are acting/doing things that you wouldn't usually expect and their conduct towards others is sometimes falling off the cliff.  No big deal, I've faced worse things in my life, and this is definitely a means to an end, hopefully it will get better faster and become a lot less of an issue.

Ryan is back playing soccer, and his Dad is "assistant coach" which I've stepped into as a favor to Roberto who's Head Coach and had no-one to help.  Not going to lie, it's nice to be back involved, but this will be a one & done I think, I'm more inclined to help only Ryan and can't commit to the 3 times a week all the season.

Next up is Halloween and I'm assuming that means Jessica will be off whipping her subordinates into shape to provide the best possible Bingo night, once that's gone, we'll begin thinking about Christmas.

I'll get more updates before then!  Honest.

Have fun,

J, J, R & H

Life got busy - Part 1

Hello again everyone, did you miss us?

I was thinking I needed to get onto updating here and then worked out it's been 12 weeks ooops..  So the lets try to split up the summer with 2 updates in quick succession.

Part 1 shall follow on from last time, where we'd said goodbye to Jet, it was of course just about end of school year and both Ryan & Hannah had an excellent summer.  Ryan was back at summer school for 3 weeks and did well, he also took some extra STEM training for 3 evenings at the local library run by a Grade 2 teacher from Lowes Island.  What was good about it was he worked with some of his friends creating bridges and towers etc out of food stuffs, he showed some good construction skills, perhaps Minecraft does serve some positive purpose after all!

Hannah turned 3 of course, and had an exceptional party at Clemyjontri, for a lot of parents it was either the first time ever or the reason to return after a while away and again the weather behaved and we all had fun.  Hannah did freak out people though early on, as I was unloading the car I got a call... "Hi, is this Hannah's Dad?".. "Yes!" "oh great, I have Hannah, she's lost!"  cue me looking round from the back of the car to see David's mom holding an upset Hannah's hand.  I quickly got to them and it turned out Hannah had lost sight of Mom and her friends so had returned to the last place she saw them, the toilets.  But of course they weren't there.  At that moment I saw one of the Moms run into the toilets and call for Hannah, followed by a fairly frantic Jessica coming down the path.  Relax lady, I've got this covered ;-)  Hannah was fine by this point so everyone got on with the fun.

We made our pilgrimage down to Myrtle Beach and got lucky as expected poor weather turned out to be pretty reasonable actually, we even met up with Maggie on the beach one morning.  We played Crazy Golf - well Ryan cheated a bit and Hannah simply put the ball down next to the hole and whacked it in.  Stupidly we did this on the hottest day at the height of the afternoon... and all showed wear & tear after it.  The oven in the room was pretty crap, kept setting off the smoke detector and didn't heat properly, but we made the best of it, and of course managed to go through a full aquarium of seafood.  We even found a very good, cheap burger place and found both kids could pick something off the menu.  Best news of all is Paul didn't spend any time needing to discuss actions with any cops this time!  Progress.

Cats coped in our absence, we had a deal set up where twice a day someone came in, fed, watered and cleaned up..... and after a little reticence - Poofy does not forgive easily! and some insistence on sleeping with us on our bed, they were both back in good form.

Jessica continued her escape room endeavors, from the whispers I've heard, they seem to be failing more than they succeed, but somehow they still manage to consume alcohol. There's been some bad behavior from the group - you know who you are! - and Jessica is equally culpable for encouraging it!

Ok, part 2 will follow shortly - honest.